Lupe talked about Online Piracy and how it affects artists when their tracks get leaked with The BoomBox. Here are some excerpts:

"People are trapped in the culture where music needs to be free and you don't need to pay for it," he told The BoomBox. "I was just at Princeton, speaking at Cornel West's class, and someone asked that. They asked about the relationship between blogs and artists. I told them, at a bare minimum it costs me, literally out of my own pocket, it costs me $3,000 to $4,000 to make a song. It costs me about $700 to $800 to make a freestyle. I'm giving you that."

The Chi-town MC went on to discuss the difference between the tracks he dishes out compared to those bloggers take from him, unjustly.

"Just imagine if I work with The Neptunes, including studio time and everything that goes into it -- flying people around -- it gets up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars to make a song like 'I'm Beamin' or 'I Gotcha.'

So to kinda see it on the Internet and, for some instances, for sale, who are you to have the right to tell me that I shouldn't demand payment or feel a certain way for seeing people put my music out there like that. If I chose to do that, that's one thing. But I didn't choose to do that. That music was stolen."

@Anonymous1 well that's cause kanye has enough money to do what ever the fuck he want's!!! and he produced those tracks! @Anonymous4 yes it does cost money to make a freestyle if you don't know how to make a Inst with out a Producer!!! and that other gay fag STFU!!! There's only three good ghost writer's out there! one being skillz and jay even said lupe writes his on music .

I'm sure Neptunes tracks are high as hell. But like what Lupe is saying everything cost money, nothing is free. This is his work of art and if he didn't put it out there for free, then it's not FREE! And Besides the record company makes most of the money from his album as well as producers and engineers. He can put out a free mixtape but studio time cost. I'm sure he has money from endorsements, but put yourself in his place. He's spending thousands of dollars, how much are you spending? If someone is spending thousands of dollars, they expect to make it back...PROFIT! Long story short, he loves his FANS but if you're not willing to pay for his "WORK OF ART" instead you're stealing it.

People here are very ignorant about the music business. First off a Neptunes or Timbo track (youtube it) can easily be $100,000 - $250,000 dollars. No exaggeration. Obviously a 9th Wonder or other not terribly huge producer's track won't be that much. Maybe a couple of grand.

Dude the mastering SOFTWARE I have (torrented of course) is $2610!!! Waves Diamond Bundle (PLUGINS!) is $2610!!! Think about that. Dude is not exaggerating. Stop applying your low budget bedroom prices to Neptunes/Just Blaze/Timbo/Dre priced productions in million dollar studios. $3000 is a hell of a cheap price for a Neptunes track seen through to an end product.

Finally someone who makes sense. Even if shit cost him 200bucks to make, people who post that shit have no right to. If he wants to put it out he will. I would love me some new lupe right now, but I don't even listen to those leaked shit more than once. I wait for him to drop a mixtape or something with his tracks.

I can buy it costing $3000 for a song, like others have said it probably adds up to way more than that when you talk about producers and stuff. But $700 for a freestyle? Instrumental is free. All you need is studio time. If it's a freestyle you probably don't have too spend that much time in the studio. Add the cost of the engineer perhaps. Do you guys think that adds up to $700?

I'm not in the music business nor do I make music at home, but I'm pretty sure that an instrumental isn't free. I'm confident when I say that the people who produced the beats or the artist that originally performed on it have to be compensated in some way if that instrumental was used by any legitimate musician/rapper etc.

Using other artist intrumentals don't cost anything if they are on a mixtape(as long as they're free).Freestyles are usually done over those instrumentals, which can be downloaded for free all over the net. If the freestyle is truely a freestyle, it shouldn't take 700 dollars worth of studio time to record a freestyle. If it really cost him that much,then maybe I should invest in a studio and have lupe as my primary client. Lol